


Requires Attunement

by baroque_mongoose



Category: Romantically Apocalyptic
Genre: Chalk of Labelling, Gen, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-06-05 20:42:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15178937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baroque_mongoose/pseuds/baroque_mongoose
Summary: Zee Captain's "Chalk of Labelling" has been bugging Snippy for some time.





	Requires Attunement

I knew I was going to regret asking this. The trouble was, I couldn’t stop it from bugging me otherwise. I cleared my throat.

“Uh… Captain?”

Zee Captain lowered the piece of broken drainpipe that zee had been pretending to use as a telescope. “I SEE NO SHIPS!” zee boomed. “WHAT IS IT, MEIN SNIPPY?”

“That… Chalk of Labelling,” I said. “Would you mind if I borrowed it?”

Zee Captain chuckled. It always amazed me just how much expression zee could get into that mask; somehow, zee contrived to twinkle at me affectionately. “SILLY SNIPPY. IT WOULD NOT WORK FOR YOU, FOR IT IS A WONDROUS ITEM THAT REQUIRES ATTUNEMENT!”

The regret was already kicking in, but I pressed on. I had to understand that stupid chalk. If you could use it to label a random door with “SHORTCUT TO THE MOON” and actually get one, then the possibilities were almost endless. You could take a box of rubbish and label it “SAFE AND DELICIOUS FOOD”, for instance. Or you could label another door to somewhere that wasn’t a nuclear wasteland – maybe somewhere in the past – and we could all have a much-needed holiday. In fact, if we could just label a door and go to the past, then _maybe_ we could fix things so that the nuclear wasteland never actually happened.

Heck, even writing “SANE” on Pilot would improve things.

“All right, Captain,” I said, gritting my teeth. “How does one attune to a piece of chalk?”

“I AM DEEPLY HAPPYFIED BY YOUR SUDDEN MOST UNHORATIOLIKE PHILOSOPHY,” replied Zee Captain cheerfully. “DANCE WITH ME!” Before I could do anything about it, zee was whirling me round in an impromptu waltz.

“OK, I’m dancing, I’m dancing, but what about my question?” This time, I was determined not to let it go. I was going to be like a dog with a bone about this, no matter how infuriatingly vague and distracted Zee Captain got.

“THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP!” zee bellowed happily in my ear.

“Yes, Captain, we are friends and it’s good, even though you are going to make me deaf if you keep doing that,” I said, with a patience I did not know I possessed. “But the chalk...”

“DID I NOT JUST ANSWER YOUR MOST WISDOMFUL QUESTION?”

“You said ‘the power of friendship,’” I pointed out. “Well, actually you yelled it.”

“EXACTLY!” Those extraordinary purple-pink lenses appeared to twinkle again. “YOU MUST MAKE FRIENDS WITH THE CHALK, MEIN SNIPPY.”

I just stared.

“And how,” I asked very slowly, “does one go about making friends with a piece of chalk? I’ve… never tried it before, so, you know, I’d appreciate a few pointers.”

“IT ALL DEPENDS ON THE CHALK. EVERY PIECE OF CHALK IS DIFFERENT, YOU KNOW!”

I sighed inwardly. I really should have known better.

But by the time I had finally found some chalk – it took me all morning, but my efforts were rewarded with a whole box of the stuff, broken into pieces but still perfectly serviceable – I had an idea. The way to go with Zee Captain was always to play along on zeer own ground. And so I brought the box to Zee Captain, tipped out the pieces into an old rag on my lap, and said, “Now, Captain, I do need a little help. Please tell me which of these is the friendliest piece of chalk.”

Zee picked one out without hesitation. “THIS ONE!”

“Thank you.”

Well, that was that sorted out. Now I had to… make friends with it? I decided to go and find somewhere private. The last thing I wanted was Pilot or Engie walking in on me while I was talking to a piece of chalk. Neither of them would think there was anything weird about it, and I wasn’t at all sure I could handle that.

There was a building a few streets away which had once been a cake shop. Now there was nothing there but lightly caramelised ashes and the inevitable grinning skeleton sitting on the floor behind the counter. Maybe she’d seen the explosion and tried to duck. I never found out her name, but she used to be a familiar face; that shop had sold good cakes.

And now she was a skeleton, and I was a lunatic survivor who was about to borrow her counter to try to make friends with a piece of chalk.

We sat on that counter, the chalk and I. I tried talking to it to see if I got an answer, which, given recent events, was not beyond the bounds of possibility. Still, whatever else ANNET had managed to animate, she either hadn’t got to this piece of chalk yet or the chalk was sizing me up before it decided to say anything…

...the _chalk_ was _sizing me up?_ Heaven help me…

I tried encouraging it. I told it very seriously that it was a special piece of chalk, and that Zee Captain zeerself had singled it out from all the other pieces in its box. I told it that it didn’t know what it might be capable of, but that it and I were going to have fun finding out together. I asked it how it felt about becoming a Chalk of Labelling and having exciting adventures.

It said nothing, chalkily.

After about half an hour of this insanity, I put the chalk back into my pocket and returned to our current base, where I found Zee Captain jollying Pilot and Engie into a game of leapfrog. Pilot was participating enthusiastically, Engie a great deal less so.

“But my back...” he was protesting.

“Excuses!” said Pilot. “You are a cowardly jumpsuit and I do bite my thumb.”

“WE MUST NOT HURT OUR SWEET ENGIE. DOES IT HURT AT THE MOMENT, MEIN ENGIE?” asked Zee Captain solicitously. “AH, LOOK, IT IS THE SNIPPY SNIPSTER OF SNIPPINESS! IS THE CHALK YOUR VERY EXCELLENT FRIEND NOW?”

“Um, no, I’m fine at the moment, but I’ve got a history of back trouble… it’s in my medical records… chalk?!” Engie managed.

I sighed. “Long story, Engie. I… I honestly don’t know, Captain, but I tried my best.”

“GOOD SNIPPY! SPLENDID SNIPPY! NOW COME AND PLAY LEAPFROG.”

To be honest, I couldn’t blame Engie for pleading back trouble. Pilot was heavy and inclined to be rambunctious, and he wasn’t particularly good at taking his turn at being the one who was leapfrogged over. He wanted to do all the leaping. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll take your place, then, Engie.”

“Uh… thanks,” said Engie, taken aback.

“NO! WE MUST ALL PLAY!” Zee Captain insisted.

“Nuh-uh. I’m the nearest thing you have to a doctor right now, and I’m not competent to treat damaged back muscles. If I swap for Engie, you’ll still have three people playing.”

Amazingly, that actually worked. That is to say, Pilot continued to protest, but I had managed to convince zee person I needed to convince. “VERY WELL!” zee boomed. “GO AND LIE DOWN ON YOUR BACK AND MINISTER TO IT, ENGIE. SNIPPY WILL REPRESENT YOU!”

Honestly. The things I end up doing these days.

So we played leapfrog until Zee Captain suddenly exclaimed, “BUT WHAT AM I THINKING OF? MEIN SNIPPY MUST REAP THE RESULTS OF HIS PATIENT ATTUNEMENT!”

“Bwah?!” I said. Somehow the game had made me forget all about the chalk. “Oh… oh yes...”

“OFF YOU GO!” zee said merrily, clapping me on the back.

I couldn’t argue. As I walked away, I heard Pilot asking plaintively what on earth was going on. Good question, mate, I thought. Probably I am about to look like an idiot, as if I didn’t already. The fact that the only previous audience for my idiocy had been a piece of chalk and a skeleton didn’t make me feel any better.

I walked quietly into our current base. Engie was fast asleep in one corner; he had the right idea. In fact, thinking about it, after all that jumping about, I needed a nap myself. I’d had a bad night the night before.

Mmmph. Now, what to label?

I thought of writing “HEALTHY BACK” on Engie, but he was wrapped in so many blankets that I couldn’t move them without the risk of waking him. There wasn’t a box of rubbish that I could write a food label on. In fact, when you got right down to it, there was just the wall. And the door, of course, but I wasn’t going to risk messing with our only exit.

Bah. I was tired – too tired to be bothered to think properly. My bed, such as it was, was in the corner diagonally opposite Engie’s, and there was a window at the head end but none in the wall alongside. I stood on the bed, reached up as high as I could, and wrote on the wall: “SOMETHING ZEE CAPTAIN WILL LIKE”. That would have to do, for now.

I tucked the chalk away into my pocket and flopped into bed, falling asleep almost instantly. It seemed like only five minutes, though it must have been a lot longer, before Zee Captain and Pilot returned, engaged in a deeply earnest conversation about yo-yos. As usual, Zee Captain couldn’t keep zeer voice down. I woke, blinking through my goggles.

“...AND THAT IS WHY IT IS OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE TO USE A BRAIDED CORD AND NOT A SIMPLE STRING OF TWISTING!” I was informed, whether I wanted to be or not.

“My Captain is clever and knows everything!” said Pilot. “What about the knot? Is there any holy and arcaneful secret to the knot of a yo-yo?”

“THOUGH A YO-YO WITH A SO-SO KNOT IS A NO-NO,” replied Zee Captain, “THE KNOT IS NOT GREATLY IMPORTANT. THE STRING’S THE THING.”

That’s almost poetry, I reflected. Suddenly, Pilot pointed to the wall above my bed and squeaked.

“Captain! Captain! Look!”

Zee Captain looked.

“MY, MY, SNIPPY,” zee said. “I CAN SEE YOU ARE GOING TO BE GOOD AT THIS.”

“Good at… bwah?” I asked. I was still only half awake, and not at all sure why they were getting so excited about five words chalked on a wall.

Zee Captain grabbed my arm and beinghandled me to my feet. “BEHOLD THE HANDIWORK OF SNIPPY AND HIS FRIENDLY CHALK!”

I beheld. In fact, I stared at the wall in growing disbelief. Above my bed, the words had vanished, but there was now a chalk drawing. It showed Zee Captain sitting on a chair in the middle of the group, beaming; just as in real life, the beam was obvious despite the mask. On either side of Zee Captain, on slightly higher chairs, were equally cheerful-looking representations of Engie and myself, and standing directly behind Zee Captain was Pilot with his hands on zeer shoulders. It was the perfect… family portrait, for want of a better phrase.

“Snippy is a good artist? You never told us you were a good artist!” said Pilot. “All this time you hide your light under a furlong and now you draw for us the best picture ever.”

“I… didn’t draw that,” I replied slowly. “I’m not that good. Besides, I’ve only got white chalk, but the goggles are all the right colours.” At least… I could only remember finding white chalk. Perhaps I did find other colours too? This was what happened when I didn’t sleep well.

“HOW DID YOU LABEL THE WALL, MEIN SNIPPY?” Zee Captain asked.

“I wrote the words ‘SOMETHING ZEE CAPTAIN WILL LIKE,’ just up there,” I replied. “Sorry. I was tired and out of ideas.”

“SILLY SNIPPY! WHY ARE YOU APOLOGISING? THE CHALK IS QUITE RIGHT. IT IS EXACTLY THE MOSTEST WONDERFULLEST THING THAT COULD BE UPON A WALL.” Zee swung me round in another on-the-spot dance, this one vaguely resembling a quickstep. “ALL HAIL THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP!”

“Umm… yeah. All hail. Engie, are you all right over there?”

“Blmngph,” said Engie, through the blankets.

I don’t know. Maybe I really did find some coloured chalk and I drew that picture in my sleep.

Maybe I didn’t...


End file.
